Call it tomato or tomahto, the price is still too high

For all its pervasive influence, tomato is a recent addition to Indian cuisine.

After the onion, it is the turn of the ruddy tomato to make the Indian house husband weep. Soaring prices — up nearly 500 per cent since the start of the year — are taking their toll on popular tomato-based dishes like pav bhaji, dal makhani and butter chicken.

Heavy rains in growing areas like Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and viruses in others like Karnataka, hit supplies of the crop, leaving consumers scrambling for the limited stock at the local markets. There have already been reports of fisticuffs over the precious commodity which now costs more per kilo than a liter of petrol. Indeed, the din over rising prices of tomatoes has drowned the equally steep hike in those of other vegetables, including such desi khana essentials as ginger and chillies.

That’s because the fruit, a native of the lower Andes cultivated by the Aztecs in Mexico, where it is called 'tomatl', meaning "plump fruit", is today a ubiquitous feature of menus across Indian kitchens appearing regularly as an ingredient as well as finished product.

But for all its pervasive influence, it is a recent addition to Indian cuisine. Nowhere in the Vedas or in any of the later books is there any mention of it. It was only in the 16th century that the fruit first made its appearance in the country thanks to Portuguese explorers who brought it along on their voyages. But it was not till the 18th century when British seafaring traders pushed its usage that it took hold of the Indian palate, more strongly in the North than elsewhere, perhaps because of its versatility. Even then, it was initially viewed with a curious mix of suspicion and confusion about what it really is. Which is why it is still called vilayati baingan or vilayati vangi in different parts of the country affirming its alien status as well as its perplexing place on the table.

Over time, however, like India has done with so many other edibles, the tomato was assimilated in our cooking and adapted for our tastes. In Mughlai dishes, for instance, it adds the sourness and gives body while elsewhere it is turned into delicious chutneys. It also takes pride of place in the apologetic Indian salad mix along with onions and cucumbers. Then there is the ketchup which we smear on top of everything, including noodles and toast. Though accounting for a very small percentage of usage of tomatoes in the country, it all adds up to a tidy sum of 20 million tonnes of the fruit grown every year.

Indeed, along with onions and potatoes, it is one of the three largest cultivated, produced and consumed vegetables in India, making India the second-largest producer of all the three in the world just after China.

That explains why people are up in arms over the non availability of the fruit in markets across the country. In turn, that’s given birth to India’s own version of the La Tomatina Festival that takes place every year on the last Wednesday of August in Buñol, a little village near Valencia in Spain. Trucks loaded with tomatoes proceed to drive through an area earmarked for the tomato fight and what follows is a virtual bloodbath. The Indian version though is the exact opposite, consisting not of wasting it but of protecting it with your life. Thus, a vegetable vendor in Varanasi has hired bouncers to protect his tomato stall and keep marauders at bay.

Such dependance on what is after all an imported fruit, isn’t good for an atmanirbhar Bharat. Particularly since substitutes are readily available. Tamarind, raw mango, kokum and lemon are just some of the items that provide the tanginess if not the colour.

So, let's just call the whole thing off. Instead of debating whether it is tomato or tomahto, let's make do with potato or potahto.